Tag Archives: madness

I have seen the best kinds of madness
destroyed by my generation:
all strange chaotic magic stilled
in the great press of conformity’s
graveyard silent stare,
all tangents pruned before they fruit,
left in the harsh day’s sun to wither;
all brave ideals, like beach sand,
swept out into a sea of doubt;
all savage and bewildered strength,
enough to change a planet’s course,
seduced into self-destruction,
enslaved to spin a hamster’s wheel
or worse, to fabricate ennui.

17 MAY 2012

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Who could imagine their ancestors
all stark raving mad,
or at least each generation
marking out as bad
an apple flung far from the tree,
opposed to status quo
and causing much embarrassment,
endless grief and woe?
Yet isn’t it a kind of madness
to mime, deaf and mute,
precisely as your forebears did,
and not press your own suit?
And times when the world was mad —
if your lot stayed the same,
would you not think it odd or find
some malady to blame?
To think that no one in my family
thought this world not right,
or questioned why it should be so,
gives me an awful fright.
For what is more insanity:
to flee a maddened world,
or find a place inside the whirlwind
and stay safely curled?
A paradox that troubles me
whenever I feel sane
is why I find a normalcy
amidst such strife and pain,
and why we fear insanity,
which makes us more aware
of that which keeps the world divided:
in here, and out there.

23 JAN 2005

One could argue, I suppose, that there is a hint of madness to be found in EVERY family tree. And for those that exhibit no overt sign of it, I suggest that itself is the madness.

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It often seems that the more you emphasize your own sanity, rely upon it as a sure thing, compare yours to others, the more likely it is that you are in fact not sane.

On the flip side, it seems to me that questioning one’s own sanity is one of the surest signs that you are NOT insane.

It’s like the Sufi story, wherein everyone drank of the water that came from their wells. One person kept some of this water in storage. One day, the water coming from the wells changed, and everyone who drank it behaved and believed completely different from how they had before. Further, they had no memory of the water that was before, or that the water was ever different. The person who had stored up the old water, however, continued drinking from his stockpile. As a result, he saw that everyone was acting in a manner that they previously would have considered insane; and any attempt he made to convince others that they had changed was met with ridicule. He even offered them some of his stockpiled water, and they considered him mad. As you can imagine, he became very lonely — yet managed to drink only stockpiled water…until one day, he decided he would rather be insane like everyone else, rather than sane and alone. So he drank a cup of water from the wells, and promptly forgot all about his stockpile, and behaved like everyone else. Everyone else, by the way, was relieved that the poor addled and insane fool had finally come to his senses.

The play’s the only thing, upon this stage —
the one true line from which all tangents spring;
and if the actors move from joy to rage
in but a moment’s span, or seem to bring

a touch of madness to their roles, perhaps
reel in some strange delirium’s delight,
remember once the curtain’s drawn, these chaps
must face their critic’s mirror every night.

The lines that flow so freely from their lips
leave only bitter ashes on the tongue,
and in love’s arsenal, faded applause
serves as a scourge, and accolades as whips.
No wonder they seem mad and quite unstrung,
and break along their human seams and flaws.

09 DEC 2004

There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him. — Antonin Artaud (1895-1948)